Miami Dolphins star wide receiver Tyreek Hill, dating back to the first passes he caught from Tua Tagovailoa, has not been shy about comparing his current quarterback to his previous one with the Kansas City Chiefs.
Back then, in the 2022 offseason, Hill propped up Tagovailoa by highlighting his accuracy, saying he felt Tagovailoa was the league’s most accurate passer, even more so than Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
Now, after two seasons playing with Tagovailoa, Hill is underlining one area where the Dolphins’ left-handed passer can stand to improve and get to Mahomes’ level: Leadership and communication with his receivers.
“That’s one thing that our quarterback, he’s going to add, Tua,” Hill told “The Pivot” podcast in an interview released Tuesday.
While Tagovailoa has become a team captain in the past two years, developed confidence playing with Hill and under coach Mike McDaniel and grown out of a certain pre-existing shell as a leader, his communication still has another level to reach, according to Hill. One that he saw from his quarterback in Kansas City, who after winning one Super Bowl together has since added two more upon Hill’s departure to Miami.
“We all had a relationship with Pat,” Hill said. “We all hang out. We all do stuff outside of football. And in Miami, we’re still building that. It hasn’t got to that yet. But I’m telling you, this year it’s going to get to that.”
Hill indicated that the quarterback-receiver relationship, while appearing flowery on the outside, has had its bumps in the road.
“We done had some battles in there already,” Hill said, “but it ain’t been a battle where it’s like we can have a conversation but then we can come back the next play and be like, ‘Hey, bro, I think you should do that.’”
Hill said there would sometimes be interactions that just resulted in expletives getting thrown back and forth and communication shutting down for a bit. He wants all sides to be able to confront each other directly with constructive criticism.
“You need to get open. I need to be better,” Hill offered as an example. “And then we need to come back and then talk about it, not have grudges against each other.
“Being able to have those tough conversations, it’s needed, I feel like. Because that got us better when Pat did it. It made me want to kick his (butt), but it made me want to get better.”
Hill recalled a moment one season with Mahomes where all the Chiefs pass-catchers were struggling and Mahomes called each of them out individually.
“In that moment right there, I was like, ‘Yo, it’s go time now,’ ” Hill said. “That put so much fuel in my heart. That next game, that’s when we began to get things rolling. Because you never want to get called out by the leader of your team like that.”
Hill also circled back to his previous comparisons between Tagovailoa and Mahomes in the interview.
“Pat, he’s a different dude,” he said. “He’s obviously the best quarterback in the league. What I said about Tua being the most accurate, this year, for Tua, this is a build-on season because this (was) obviously the best season of his career. We’re going to go from accurate to being fearless. … He’s going to continue to add on to his game because he’s got the skill set and he’s going to add on to it with all the weapons he has around him.”
Since joining the Dolphins, Hill has posted back-to-back career highs in receiving yards, surpassing 1,700 yards each of the past two seasons. His 1,799 yards and 13 receiving touchdowns each led the NFL in 2023.
But Miami also hasn’t advanced past the wild-card round of the playoffs while Kansas City won the past two Super Bowls, eliminating the Dolphins in the opening postseason matchup of the latest run.
As Tagovailoa enters the final season of his rookie contract, he and the Dolphins are negotiating a long-term extension this offseason.
